Recognition of scamming and phishing techniques, and how to stay cyber-safe

Nowadays, cybercriminals have to become smarter to manage to access your personal data, bank account or hack into your social media accounts. Or do they? It is often assumed that with the ever upgrading software and two-steps verification systems we are much safer than years ago. But truth be told, the absolute majority of cyberattacks and hackers’ work is not done through some elaborate coding to access our PCs. It is through our own inattention!

Believe it or not, among the most popular reasons for people to lose their data are:

• Bad password management – creating passwords too easy, sharing them or otherwise keeping them in an easily-accessible place,
• Paying insufficient attention – logging on insecure websites, not checking the URL of the website, allowing apps to access the data,
• Carelessness – subscribing to unchecked apps, clicking advertisements leading to phishing websites, downloading files from dangerous sources.

And these are just three! Staying safe online is just as important as being safe IRL (in real life). Additionally to our own efforts, we need to be careful of others that might not have pure intentions online. To make sure we and our data are safe enough, let’s talk about scamming and phishing – two techniques used by malicious individuals trying to steal from us!

Scamming is defined by Cambridge Dictionary as: an illegal plan for making money, especially one that involves tricking people. In terms of online security, being scammed means: being tricked to do something that resulted in loss of private data, money or other unfortunate consequences.

Scammers tend to pose as individuals that might be important to a person’s case – send email or social media messages signed as bank managers, official services, administrators of websites you frequently visit, maybe some rich people ‘offering’ you a good deal. This technique is called phishing. While traditionally we tend to connect these activities to written form and said emails, these days they tend to contain malicious links. The thieves might want your BLIK, credentials or other sensitive information. And it is of utmost importance to remember – nevershare your password with anyone, but also don’t share information about yourself! You can only lose if you do. It’s dangerous to be naive on the Internet.

You would do best to just block a scammer trying to siphon information off you, but you can also report them to data administrators of different websites – be it Google, Facebook or Steam. It has the potential to help others and potentially reduce the amount of scammers/phishers out there, on the Internet.

What else can you do to stay safe from malicious schemes or generally improve your Internet security? You might want to be carefulwith apps you subscribe to on your browser – and get interested in widely recommended ones, AdBlockfor example. Downloadfiles only from trustedsources, be careful with torrents and shady streaming services. And if you want to watch a new episode of your favourite show – think about subscribing to legit services. It can save time and nerves!

Vocabulary:

Other useful vocabulary: